He was born on May 4, 1957, in Long Beach, and had to wait three interminable years before moving to Laguna for the rest of his life, a proud 52 year resident of what he considered Heaven on Earth. He attended virtually every school in town, including Aliso Elementary, which no longer exists.

Getting Andy to leave the zip code required extradition papers. Leaving Wood’s Cove was only slightly easier; many considered him to be the cove’s unofficial Greeter. He lived nearly half his life a few blocks away on Ruby Street. He would’ve preferred pitching a permanent tent 20 yards north of the Wood’s lifeguard tower.

His love of our town was reflected in the many articles he wrote for the Indy. Andy chronicled Laguna’s history and its oldest institutions — Wally’s Barber Shop, Riddle Field, the Abel family, the long-gone ocean piers, as well as bygone stores like McCalla’s, Sid’s Shoe Shop, Trotter’s Bakery, Klass Electric, Acord’s, Gene’s Market and Sprouse-Reitz to name a few. When each one closed, it was if he’d lost a friend.

His writing talent didn’t stop with the newspaper. Andy co-wrote several successful movies for Paramount and other studios, including “Clockstoppers” and “The Condemned.” He also wrote the “Simon & Simon” reunion movie and the TV series “Strange Luck.”

Not surprisingly, Andy had a prolific career as an actor. He starred in numerous plays at the Artists’ Theatre during high school and productions at the Laguna Playhouse like “The Failure to Zig Zag,” “Inspecting Carol” and “Room Service”; he eventually became box office manager. He also directed productions such as “The Vagina Monologues” to great acclaim. And let’s not forget those highly irreverent Super 8 movies he made every summer at the Tivoli Terrace in his teens. Good thing he didn’t go into politics.

His larger than life personality was preserved in a number of films and television movies, “The Colony,” “Dying To Live” and “Alien Fury”among them. He appeared on the game show “To Tell The Truth” pretending to be a professional sand castle builder.

But none of these parts gave him the joy of starring in “Boxboarders!”, a love letter to Laguna that involved the entire community. Andy played the part of Terry ‘Zazu’ Neptune, named after our dear friend Terry Neptune, and he steals every scene. There’s no question that his hysterically heartwarming performance led to the movie winning an award at the Newport Beach Film Festival. More importantly, he had the time of his life creatively — his love of Laguna and overflowing talent came together kismet style.

Let’s add virtuoso drummer to Andy’s list of accomplishments. He began performing on pots and pans shortly after learning to walk, eventually performing in various bands for crowds of up to 2,000 people. As a proud member of Quayton and the Maxiwhackers, he stripped from a police uniform down to a leopard skin g-string during one show and later performed a chainsaw solo. Andy was pounding the skins right up until last week and loving every second of it.

Speaking of love, he was blessed when he met Tracy Middleton, a high school English teacher who became his best friend, de facto editor and love of his life. Their lively banter at Wood’s Cove was often overheard: “I love and adore you, Tracy,” to which she’d reply, “You’re a silly man.” She was so right.

Encapsulating Andy’s life is virtually impossible. He was elected student body president at Thurston Middle School and won by a landslide. He mentored kids like they were his own for the Laguna Playwrights Festival. He pretended to be blind to customers while pumping gas at Don’s Groovy Gulf on Legion Street. He interviewed the ‘official’ Greeter, Eiler Larsen, when he barely reached the height of Mr. Larsen’s knees. As a 3-year-old he turned down an apple and demanded candy from actor Richard Chamberlain’s parents on Halloween. He had to be bribed with fresh donuts to get him to church as a kid, then later became a soloing choir member at the Methodist Church in South Laguna.

His big generous heart suddenly gave out only hours after celebrating his 55th birthday. It was one of the most perfect days he’d had in years, spent with his loved ones.

There is a note Andy wrote to himself, still stuck on his refrigerator door. It sums up why he was, and still is, so loved by his family, friends, community, and anyone who was ever lucky enough to cross his path: “It’s my job to be a human being.”

He did the job well, which makes it so hard to say goodbye. We all miss you, Andy, more than you could have ever imagined.

A celebration of Andy’s life is planned in the near future.

A Hometown Comic and Scribe Exits the Stage

In 2008, Andy Hedden taught a playwriting workshop that culminated in a festival of one-act, student-written plays.

The production required klieg lights, a set lectern, and pre-recorded voice-overs for the two actors wearing full body costumes.

The show’s main characters, though, stepped into the floodlights on the Laguna Playhouse stage in 1979 without a script. Dave Barrett and his fiancé relied on a friend, Andy Hedden, to devise a non-religious wedding ceremony for them in a place with enough space for all their friends.

True to his penchant for comic timing and theatrical flair, Hedden cast a giant penguin as the minister, who extracted a vow of “until divorce do us part” from the couple. But before the groom could seal the pact with a kiss, a polar bear stalking prey lumbered onstage and attempted to carry off the bride.

Beneath the fur? Hedden.

“I’ve never been to a wedding like it since,” said Mark Vuille, the nuptial’s lighting designer, recalling the many antics of his childhood friend, Andy Hedden, who died unexpectedly from a heart attack on Saturday, May 5.

“You never think it’s going to stop like that,” Vuille said.

The day before his death, Hedden spent his 55th birthday in the company of his older brother, Rob, and their mother. After lunch, the three enjoyed the scenery of Heisler Park, seated on a memorial bench dedicated to the boys’ father, who died in 1985. Hedden sat between them, an arm draped around each. “His spirits were high,” said Rob. “I’m trying to make sense of it.”

Hedden, a disciplined actor also adept at writing for film and television, locally was well known for his contributions to the Indy and for his years managing the Playhouse box office, where his sweet temperament and recall for names and faces endeared him to ticket-flustered patrons and demanding directors. “There were so many people who adored him,” said former managing artistic director Doug Rowe, who cast Hedden in several plays but also hired him into the box office job in 1979. “Andy was such an important piece of the chemistry,” Rowe said.

“Andy served our patrons like nobody else could,” said Greg Renoe, a Playhouse spokesman. “I cannot recall the number of times that I personally heard Andy address our patron family on a first name basis with warmth and regard.”

Aside from the spoof wedding production, Hedden earned professional credits onstage and in film and shared his knowledge with students teaching playwriting in a spring workshop at the high school.

In a favorite theatre scene, Hedden rode across the Playhouse stage on a Vespa in 1994’s “A Liar,” according to Wally Zeigler, the theater’s audience services manager, a 21-year colleague and a recipient of several of Hedden’s signature Hawaiian shirts.

Hedden’s other sartorial trademark barely cloaked his feet. Not even in a tuxedo for a fancy gala would he give up sandals, recalled Zeigler.

Without any doubt, though, Hedden most joyously relished his roles in “Boxboarders!” directed by his brother, Rob, and based on the escapades of one of his nephews and a friend, who fly down a steep hill in a refrigerator box converted into a wheeled bobsled.

Told in a mockumentary style, the 2007 independent film shot on location throughout Laguna portrays the fictional tale of two high school surfing slackers. Adding wheels to a large refrigerator box and careening down a hill, the pair unintentionally create the new sport of boxboarding. Media coverage wins them instant fame. A high-stakes competition ensues for rights to the sport.

Though Rob wrote a part with his brother in mind, Hedden still had to audition for casting directors and nailed the role. “It wasn’t his big brother getting him the part,” recalled Rob.

During the shoot, “he would hang out with everyone. He was the first one on the set and the last to leave,” Rob recalled. “He spoiled me.”’

The brothers started filmmaking together as kids. June and Terry Neptune, owners of Tivoli Terrace restaurant, financed their first projects, irreverent, politically incorrect spoofs. The brothers also held down the hottest high school band, Quayton and the Maxiwackers. Andy, the drummer, was known as Stix Herculite.

Perhaps Hedden’s greatest love, though, was for his hometown. Prized possessions included a fragment from the old Main Beach boardwalk, demolished in 1968, and a chunk of asphalt from Laguna Canyon Road before its recent realignment.

His fierce pride in Laguna found an outlet in “Hedden for God’s Country,” chronicling local history, often autobiographical, told in a folksy, conversational style and published intermittently in the Indy.

“He would recount, in stunning detail and subtle nuance, the things that made Laguna so unique and wonderful when he was young, and still make it wonderful,” said Mark Christy, a grade school friend. “Andy’s descriptions of sunny days at Riddle Field were so vivid the reader could smell the freshly cut infield grass. But of his many brilliant tales, I think my favorite was ‘A Little Off the Top’, the story of his experiences with early haircuts, and in particular, his encounters with Rudy Campos and Wally’s Barber Shop. He put you in Rudy’s chair.”

2 Comments

Kally KahnAugust 16, 2012 at 1:06 pm

I’m so sad that Andy is gone. I know he was so much fun to be around because I had the pleasure of working with him at the Tivoli Terrace and was in one of his famous Tivoli Terrace films. I always remembered him as being one of the funniest guys I ever knew. Andy was a really good person… a really special person.